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White Soup

A clear soup made with veal, fowl, bacon, rice, anchovies, peppercorns, herbs, onions, celery, almonds, cream, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the veal, fowl, bacon, water, rice, anchovies, peppercorns, sweet herbs, onions, and celery in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer until the soup reaches your desired strength.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a clean pot.

  4. Let the soup sit overnight.

  5. Skim off the scum.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the liquid into a saucepan.

  2. Add the ground almonds.

  3. Boil for about 15 minutes.

  4. Strain through a fine cloth.

  5. Stir in the cream and egg yolk.

  6. Boil for a few minutes.

  7. Serve in a tureen.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Celery + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Ground almonds thicken the soup and give it a rich, nutty flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the finished soup.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the cream when stirred in, adding body to the soup.
Rice
Releases starch during simmering, helping to thicken the soup body.
Veal knuckle
Gelatin-rich bones build a full-bodied, savory base for the stock.

The step that matters

Boiling after adding the egg yolk. Once egg yolk is stirred into the soup, it can curdle or scramble if it boils hard. Keep the heat gentle and just warm it through so the soup stays smooth.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, rice, onion, celery, cream, egg):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, rice, onion, celery, cream, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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